Chapter 4 “Pop, Queer, or Fascist? The Ambiguity of Mass Culture in Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising” highly regards Kenneth Anger’s film. The objective of the author is to minimize the influences of Scorpio Rising that many associate with European cinema such as the works of Banuel and Eisenstein, and instead to focus on its involvement with popular American youth culture. The ambiguity of the film’s stance on the pop culture is carefully examined as it simultaneously celebrates the freedom of subversion and condemns the life threatening danger and fascist identification that can arise from egocentric pleasure seeking.
    Three approaches the text uses to analyze the films ambiguity are homosexuality, mass culture, and totalitarianism. Though the bikers in the film were not gay, the author contends that Anger clearly presents them as objects of homosexual desire. This is supported by the emergence of the biker aesthetic becoming associated with S&M practices in gay popular culture. The overabundance of masculinity and macho poses blur the line between patriarchical dominance and homosexual fetishism. The concept of overabundance also ties into the rise of mass culture as opposed to high culture. This is accomplished by the juxtaposition of the clips of Marlon Brando and James Dean with films of Jesus which can be interpreted as elevating or diminishing the figures of each. The film also addresses the similarity between totalitarianism and a public subscribing to a uniform iconography through prevalent Nazi imagery and violence; the mimicry the bikers practice is correlated to following fascism.
    Unveiling the homoerotic as well as the connection between eroticism and violence which are subdued in conventional youth culture is one of the more overt effects of Scorpio Rising. On the other hand, the more ambiguous elements of the film can only be resolved though subjective interpretation.